South Brunswick charter school gets new extension

David Gard Judith Wilson, Superintendent of Schools for the Princeton Regional School District - Wednesday, February 2, 2005

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — A proposed Chinese-English charter school has failed for the second year in a row to get classroom space approved and has been given another year to plan by the state Department of Education.

The decision to give a second planning year to the proposed Princeton International Academy Charter School was immediately criticized by a local school superintendent whose district might lose revenue and students if the charter school were to open.

“They’ve had two false starts already,” said Princeton Regional superintendent Judith Wilson. “I find it disconcerting for both the planning processes for local districts and the demand and the drain of time and energy and expense that local districts are being forced to go through.”

Last year the charter school tried to gain approval to open at a former seminary in Plainsboro but couldn’t finish the planning process in time. This year a variance for a location on 12 Perrine Road in South Brunswick has been elusive because required paperwork was not submitted in time by the developer of the South Brunswick property, a spokesman for the school said. The developer is 12P Associates.

The spokesman, Parker Block, said the developer could have been better prepared when it appeared before the South Brunswick zoning board earlier this year, but he added that the process had been a very complicated one.

“The fact that this is taking longer than we expected does not reflect whether or not the school would be an innovative, high-quality addition to public school education,” he said.
PIACS, a K-2 school, would draw about 170 students from West Windsor-Plainsboro, Princeton Regional and South Brunswick schools. The school would occupy 13,780 square feet of the 41,000-square-foot Perrine Road facility.

Princeton and two other public school districts, West Windsor-Plainsboro and South Brunswick, have fought the charter school application. They have argued that they already provide a thorough education for students and that the charter school, even with an emphasis on Mandarin Chinese instruction, is unnecessary and extravagant. Charter schools are independently operated but publicly financed.

“I think that not having a suitable facility is more than a minor snag,” Wilson said. “Now that we’re more than two years into this, it’s very difficult to think that three districts will once again have to allocate funds in next year’s budget.”

Block responded that the public school districts “would do anything they can to try and stop us.”
He said Princeton International has an important contribution to make to local education.

“There’s no question that all of us, most especially the parents, would have preferred to open the school last year and would have preferred to open the school this year. That is extremely unfortunate, but it doesn’t diminish that this type of education should be part of public education,” Block said.

Now, the soonest the school could open is September 2012.

DOE official Justin Barra said the state still has confidence in the charter school plan.

“Princeton International had a strong application and continues to show the potential for a well-developed academic program. The school has asked for additional time to get the operational components of the school in place, and we will continue to monitor their progress throughout the year.”

At a zoning board meeting in South Brunswick in June, opponents far outnumbered PIACS supporters by about 3 to 1, with more than 100 people in attendance. Many wore brightly-colored stickers that said “Vote No” and “No More Charter$.”